Sign Up for Our Mental Health & Mood Disorders Newsletter

Thanks for signing up!

One day in 2005, I stuck a .45 automatic pistol in mouth and pulled the trigger. I cocked the action and pulled it again. Each pull of the trigger gave me a little more suicidal comfort. A bullet in the chamber would be next. At 44 years old I was so disgusted with what I saw in the mirror that I was willing to end my life. I was lost in the dark abyss of body dysmorphic disorder.

The issues that took me to that dark place dated to my childhood the overweight, shy child who only wanted to be accepted. Instead, there was fat shaming and bullying in my life.

One day, while I was walking home with some kids I thought were my friends, they tore my pants off me and threw them into the street. I was “pantsed." They made fun of my fat exposed stomach and my hanging “man boobs,” telling me I needed to “get a bra.” I walked the mile home in my underwear with the sounds of their laughter and amusement at what they had done to me to be ingrained in my mind--forever.

Men Have Serious Body Image Issues, Too

In the wake of the most traumatic episode of my young life, for the first time I began to process how I saw myself in the mirror in a different manner. I saw a fat, ugly monster. This was the beginning of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)--a chronic condition in which you cannot stop thinking about the flaws or perceived flaws on your body. It may surprise youto know that about 43 percent of men are affected by this condition.

No matter what changes I made to my body from then on, I would never see the real Brian. Beginning my freshman year in college I became anorexic. When that didn’t change the image in the mirror, I added bulimia to the mix. I would hide it from my roommates by turning on the shower and faucets in in the bathroom when I threw up a meal. When I went home to visit my family, the same routine of deception occurred.

I was alone with my body shame. Too afraid of judgment to tell anyone. Not my family. Not my roommates. Not my wives in three failed marriages. Failing because I was so ashamed of my reflection that I was unable to be intimate both physically and emotionally. I shut them out.

Men do not admit such things. Men do not talk about “feeling fat” or about hating our bodies. Gender stereotypes are powerful. Karen Carpenter's death from anorexia in 1983 spoke only to women. What could I tell them regardless? It had no name for me. “Bulimia” and “anorexia” would be unknown words to me until I was in my forties. They were just things I did every day like breathing. An integral part of my existence.

Alcohol, Drugs, Steroids, and a Suicide Attempt

Alcohol and drugs would also become part of my effort to change who I saw. Then came steroids. None of it made me feel better about myself, albeit a few brief moments of that cocaine high that I sought out again and again. Intense depression would follow in the realization that I was still that 11-year-old child in the mirror. Many years later would come the brush with suicide. Luckily a friend -- alert to my despair and whom I asked to bring me bullets, telling him I wanted to “go shooting” -- saved me with a call to my brothers, who showed up instead and took me to a psychiatric facility for a mental evaluation.

They say that your lowest moment in life can ultimately be your most triumphant if you survive it. I survived. Not long after that, while standing in the parking lot of that same psychiatric facility after two-day alcoholic blackout, I realized that I would either soon be dead or I would lose what I feared most, my family. A family’s love may be unconditional, but their desire to see you kill yourself is not. Distancing occurs.

A Lifetime Commitment to Recovery

With that realization, I took that first step. I got honest with everyone I had been lying to about my life, most importantly my family and my shrink. The next step was to get the behaviors under control that clouded my mind and warped my already distorted body dysmorphic judgment. I had to get the drug and alcohol issues dealt with. I walked into a 12-step meeting. That was April 8th, 2007. I never looked back. I have been sober, and free of drug and eating disorder behavior since. When my mind began to clear with sobriety, I began to address my childhood trauma with a lot of role-playing and talking to that bullied, shy 11-year-old little boy, working on forgiveness for the damage I had done to others and myself.

When I started dealing with the shame, healing began. Forgiveness occurred. Willingness to test my negative thoughts became routine. I began to actually live my life instead of existing day to day.

Am I cured? I don’t think there is a cure for BDD thoughts. There is only a “cure” for how I process them to positive thoughts. It’s an ongoing process. It may take me the rest of my life. That’s okay. I know now that the mirror does lie. I am just Brian - fat, thin, bald, and shy. There is no shame in any of that. There is no shame in admitting that as men we have those thoughts. The only shame is if we stay quiet about them. Let’s keep the conversation about BDD and body image going.

This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

Advertising Notice

This Site and third parties who place advertisements on this Site may collect and use information about
your visits to this Site and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of
interest to you. If you would like to obtain more information about these advertising practices and to make
choices about online behavioral advertising, please click here.